The Legacy of Michael Collins

On this day 100 years ago, General Michael Collins, the Army's first Commander-in-Chief, died in action at Béal na Bláth. The current Decade of Centenaries has been a fascinating time for invocations of his legacy, the power of which has been well-known since the immediate aftermath of his death.

In October 1922, a reluctant Commandant General Piaras Béaslaí was requested by the Government to write Collins’ official biography. By March 1923 Béaslaí was lamenting the fact that, while he could have written a biography ‘more interesting and intimate’ on his own, he had ‘elected to write the official biography, under Government censorship and with no profit.’ In September 1924, WT Cosgrave intimated to Béaslaí (now a civilian) that he was considering relieving him of the task. Collins’ biography was regarded as so sensitive a project that it was deemed necessary to have the matter brought before the Executive Council of Dáil éireann, who expressed concerns regarding sensitive documents to which Béaslaí still had access.

It wasn’t only the Government who were interested. In October 1925, Béaslaí’s home was raided by the IRA, believing that he possessed documents to be used in Collins’ biography that would have been damaging to the anti-Treaty cause. Béaslaí endured and published Michael Collins and the Making of a New Ireland in 1926, a book that only gets more topical as primary sources, scholarship, and time increase, being contemporarily lauded and lambasted in terms ranging from the ‘closest to [Collins’] life both emotionally and chronologically’ to ‘hagiographical.’

Since then, theories and hypotheses, ranging from who fired the fatal shot to outlandish conspiracies, have flourished. While intriguing, most need a good shave with Occam’s razor.

In Liam Lynch’s Own Words…

Responding to Liam Deasy, the Officer Commanding 1st Southern Division IRA, just six days after the ambush, IRA Chief-of-Staff Liam Lynch expressed his regret that it had become necessary to shoot such men as Michael Collins, but considered it unavoidable given the ‘awful, unfortunate National Situation’ and as a warning to those who try to ‘crush the Republic.’ Lynch congratulated his troops on a ‘successful operation’ but expressed his surprise that they did not employ mines, given that they knew there was an armoured car in the convoy. (There had been a mine laid but it was disarmed in a decision to withdraw the ambush prematurely). In correspondence a few days earlier, Lynch noted the severe shortage of mines at the IRA’s disposal. The fact that he considered their deployment at Béal na Bláth an expedient use of a limited resource illustrates how valuable a target they considered Collins’ convoy. Despite such clear acknowledgement, speculation still abounds concerning the details.

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Other ideas

One recent hypothesis suggests that long-time suspect Denis ‘Sonny’ O’Neill was unlikely to have been Collins’ killer due to a combination of physical invalidity and doubts over his previously attributed marksmanship training. Another suggests that Emmet Dalton, a member of Collins’ convoy, may have shot him. In reality, an ambush relies on principles of concentration of force, audacity and shock. It is irrelevant whose bullet does the damage, whether it’s an aimed shot, a lucky shot, a ricochet, or friendly fire ensuing from the chaos. Further suggestions that it was suspicious that there was no inquest into Collins’ death are a red herring – it was Government policy during the Civil War that inquests were only to be performed in cases of deaths that did not occur in definite military action.

Other speculations centre around the ‘smoking gun’ going up in smoke with the 1932 ‘Burn Order,’ when the outgoing Cumann na nGaedheal government ordered the destruction of Civil War intelligence, court martial and execution records in advance of handing over power to Fianna Fáil, fearing reprisals from their former adversaries. This claim is unfalsifiable and anecdotal. Precisely what was destroyed can never be known though Director of Intelligence, Colonel Liam Archer, unsuccessfully attempted to catalogue what was being destroyed, not having enough time before the Order came into effect. He was adamant, however, that no files relating to Collins’ death were included. If so sensitive and powerful a file did exist, it would have been well known to its custodians and concealing its contents would have required the life-long complicity of everyone who may have had access, including Archer, Béaslaí, MJ Costello, ‘Ginger’ O’Connell and their Staff Officers.

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Collins’ Cap

Early in 2021 there was a peculiar furore, ostensibly over the decision by the National Museum of Ireland Collins Barracks to remove from display the hat worn by Collins when he was killed. This was a professional decision informed by conservation concerns and modern museum ethical practice. The hat’s fibres contain brain matter, which is in danger of drying out and falling away if incorrectly handled, precluding it from exhibition as it would be likely to cause further damage including the loss of ingrained remains. The spin was relentless for a few weeks, ?with the museum having to issue a public statement. This episode demonstrates the power of Collins’ legacy – accusations abounded of ‘political correctness gone wrong,’ ‘hiding the horror of the Civil War’ and even absurd and vague ascription to the emasculation of Irish culture.

As a heritage professional, I found the invective aimed at another cultural institution disconcerting, not least as it was driven by misinformation. The hat had never been on display at Collins Barracks and had not been on display anywhere since 2005. It had been on display in the Museum's Kildare Street site for a good 14 years previously. Those expressing their indignation at the hat's ‘removal’ clearly couldn't have had that much interest before if they hadn't noticed that it was never on display at Collins Barracks in the first place. If they still need visceral evidence of the brutality of the Civil War, Collins’ bloodstained coat and Lynch’s bloodstained uniform remain on display.

Reason, Revenge and Justice

RTé will this week screen Cold Case Collins, in which a specially assembled team will re-open the investigation into Collins’ death. There is clearly a public appetite for answers, so it behoves Ireland’s heritage professionals, responsible for the preservation and accessibility of our documentary and artefactual inheritance, to ask why.

Contemporary archival research into how people deal with the discrepancies between official records and the breadth of human experiences in traumatic circumstances, reveals the disproportionate faith and value placed on the hypothetical, non-existent evidence of inaccessible perpetrators to establish historical facts. We see something comparable in the death of Collins and the desire to name a killer and their motives. What victims want, archival science reveals, is reason rather than revenge. The victim here is not Collins but the national psyche, collectively traumatised by being robbed of the embodiment of its revolutionary ideal.

Similarities may be drawn with the reaction to the assassination of John F Kennedy. Writing in The Atlantic in 2013, the political historian Alan Brinkley described JFK as having symbolised ‘a new generation and its coming-of-age.’ That same year, the founder of the Michael Collins Centre in Clonakilty suggested that Collins and Kennedy may have been related and proposed an investigation.?

Both deaths played out, in their way, as peculiar collective psychodramas. Had Collins lived, would he hold the same place of reverence in the collective Irish consciousness? Like JFK, he served ‘in his life and in his death…as a symbol of purpose and hope.’ The myth and legend that grew around JFK is evident in the subsequent designation in Life magazine by Jackie Kennedy of the name Camelot to refer to his administration. His name doesn’t carry the burden of the Vietnam War as that of his successor, Lyndon B Johnson. Similarly, had Collins lived, the burden of duty as the National Army’s Commander-in-Chief in a brutal Civil War may well have weighed heavily. That burden fell upon the soldiers of the National Army, whose Civil War dead lost the battle for commemoration.

Collins, like everyone, had flaws. He also cultivated the power of his own myth. When this was critically explored by Dr. Anne Dolan and Dr. William Murphy in Michael Collins: The Man and the Revolution, it attracted criticism from some who felt it was an affront. Why should this be? Ignoring Collins’ flaws, ignoring anyone’s flaws, to pedestalize and deny in them the ‘element of irreducible rascality’ is to make them less than human, not greater. From his pedestal, Collins has carried the burden of collective national ‘what ifs?’ during the post-revolutionary ‘decades of ambivalence,’ to borrow Dolan’s phrase. This anxiety for lost futures is exquisitely hauntological but shaping a modern society on what the faithful departed 'would have done' is a dangerous form of séance that leaves us open to charlatans who may channel this legacy for their own ends. Collins is part of our national collective identity, and nations are complex. We need to engage with Collins’ legacy with attendant complexity if we are to do him, and ourselves, justice.